Harry & the Maximoffs: Rescue
by Star-Scrap
Summary: Harry is being held by Hydra. The Maximoff twins are being held on the same base as him. Pre/beginning of Age of Ultron. I may have fudged the movieverse timeline a little.


Written for the fabulous Arkane291 who successfully answered that strike team delta was based on the movie The Losers with Chris Evans in it. That movie is one of those movies that I'm shamelessly addicted to and can watch over and over again while doing large art assignments.

Alright, so this one is Harry and Pietro and Wanda. I kind of fudged the introduction of the Maximoffs to be earlier in the timeline of the movieverse. Think more of the after credit scene that had them in it rather than Age of Ultron. Overall, I'm pretty happy with this piece.

As usual, requests can go in the comment section. I draw inspiration from requests, so if you want to see a particular short written, give me a prompt! I also am planning on continuing some of these shorts, so commenting is a good way to tell me what stories you want to see continued!

* * *

Pietro stared at the blank wall in front of him. Every one of the experimental subjects had been isolated, stuffed in a plain cell. "Accustomation to new influences" they called it. At first, he had thought that it was just that. A contained and observable place for them to get used to the serum that induced superpowers. And then the screams started. About a day after the injections had been finished, the cell to his left had seen a steady stream of men dressed in all white to match the walls. Every time a new scientist entered the room, the screams resumed.

From his right, he could hear the familiar sound of his sister answering scientists' questions, and whenever she got bored or stressed, a red glow would appear from beyond the wall of the cell.

And inevitably, the screams start up again.

* * *

A month into the "accustomation phase", Pietro heard the sound of footsteps approaching once again. The sound stopped 10 meters away, and in a practiced move, Pietro turned his face into his cot and brought his pillow over his head. This time, however, the screams never started.

* * *

Over the week, Pietro had been noticing small bursts of red originating in his sister's cell and exploring outward. They came infrequently (Wanda was obviously avoiding detection) and every time they came, it took longer for the red to disperse.

This time, however, the red never did. Instead of lingering and exploring, it darted for him. Pietro was paralyzed. Its impact was nothing less than violent, but Pietro couldn't be bothered to notice that. While his body was thrown across the room, his mind was torn from reality.

A small boy sat huddled in the center of a cot in a replication of Pietro's cell completely naked. The room smelled of cleaning materials, and in a puddle beneath the boy, soaking into the bed sheets, blood pooled. As various white figures streaked around the boy, he didn't move unless forced to. Every movement was far too fast for it to be reality, and every step left a ghost-like after image.

With slow and sure movements, Pietro moved to kneel next to the boy. His movement made no impact on his environment, the sheets did not crease beneath his legs and the ghost men walked right through him. He spent what felt like hours just sitting next to this child. As he watched, the men played with the body of the young man as if he were a rag doll. They cut, battered and abused him with no hesitation.

Pietro looked imploringly around the room for any sign of help. Instead, he found his sister, leaning on the glass window, peering in with intense focus. Their eye contact was short but no less intense than the situation called for.

When Wanda's eyes opened in shock, Pietro whipped back around to see that the boy was now staring at him. The boy's movements didn't have the same effect as any of the onlookers, but his mind was separated from his real boy in much the same way as Pietro and Wanda. It was almost a disturbing sight, to see the boy separated from his body, yet still habiting the same place. Pietro counted himself lucky that he hadn't yet seen his own body.

 _Are you going to hurt me too?_

The boy's question was frank, said in a dead voice and lacking of all inflection.

With a movement from Wanda, Pietro was thrown back into his body.

* * *

In the middle of the night, Pietro's thoughts still clung to the boy. His body was too thin, his hair had seemed to be falling out in chunks, his ribs were visible. Literally. Skin and muscle had been torn away in places so that bone was revealed. The boy haunted his thoughts and dreams. Wanda and he had been in bad places before, but never as bad as the boy, never torn apart or experimented on (well… not in such a clinically cold way).

Pietro knew that he had to get the boy out. His protective instincts were rearing their head. However, he had never been the planner, instead, following Wanda's lead and fighting for her safety along the way. Pietro simply had to wait for a chance to spirit the boy away from this place.

* * *

The sirens started suddenly. A simple yet shocking noise that had every soldier on the premises on their feet and preparing for battle. This, Pietro knew, was going to be his distraction. An event large enough to distract the entire base and get him out of his cell. It was frankly unexpected that such a perfect opportunity would appear so quickly. It had only been a few weeks since he had decided to free the boy, and he had almost resigned to engineering a distraction of his own.

He only had to wait for a few more minutes until Von Strucker stood in front of him. The man still carried an air of confidence even through the panic all around him.

"I trust you are eager to fight still?"

Pietro just smiled ferociously and nodded. He couldn't quite bring himself to speak to the man he had once trusted. Deception had never been his strong point, but Von Strucker in this very moment was desperate enough to overlook any signs of discomfort that were coming from Pietro. The baron scanned his hand on the glass panel and the entire window shimmered and disappeared. In a split second, Pietro was hovering at the shoulder of the man, waiting for him to do the same for Wanda.

Wanda seemed content to play word games with Von Strucker, and the process took slightly longer for her release. As soon as the glass rippled away, Pietro made his move. Wanda was left staring at Pietro standing above the crumpled body of the baron.

"We still need him to open the other cage." she hissed at him.

"He would not do it willingly anyway. What is the difference?"

With a judgemental stare, she grabbed the baron's arm and started dragging him to the third cage. To their surprise, the window was already retracted. The boy, however, was still sitting, unmoving in the center of the cell. The wounds that Pietro had observed earlier had healed over, and new ones open to replace them.

Wanda ordered "Grab the boy and me, take us outside as quickly as possible." the next thing she knew, she had been slung over Pietro's shoulder, the boy cradled in his arms, and the cool air whipping her hair around. Pietro laughed at her shocked expression.

"Fun, is it not? I have not been able to do so much running before!"

Wanda thwapped his chest. "Focus you fool. Safety for the boy comes first."

"I have an idea."

* * *

Clint was knocked head first into a snow drift.

"Are you fucking kidding me?" his question was forgotten as a silver blur made its way back to him.

"Sorry! Sorry. I am unused to the speed as of yet. I did not mean to knock you down. You are an avenger, yes? I recognize you." Pietro stumbled his way through the apology. He, very gingerly, set his sister down without disrupting the boy still cradle close to his chest. "Can you help us? Help the boy heal?" the look he got was a combination of 'I'm too old for this shit' and 'what the hell is going on here?' Pietro wilted a bit under the unwavering deadpan gaze.

Finally relenting with a heavy sigh, clint motioned the twins closer. "Show me the boy." Pietro started to unwind the boy from his shirt, but before he could completely reveal the boy, the avenger was there. He had grabbed the looseness of Pietro's scrub shirt and pressed it to the boy's wounds that had once again started freshly bleeding. "Jesus. When was this done to him? In the attack? Or earlier?"

"Earlier. Maybe a day, maybe weeks. He seems to heal well. I do not know what has been done to him."

"There's a jet northwest from here. Take him to it, stay with him, put pressure on his wounds. We'll end this battle as soon as possible."

* * *

Harry knew consciously that the pain had stopped, that he was safer know than before, but he didn't want to leave the sanctuary of his mind. He had found that he could ignore the pain by retreating to that particular meditation spot that wizards could access. He knew that after the changes that his new title of master of death had wrought, he could stay in that mindset for almost an infinite amount of time. After all the pain that he had gone through at the hands of hydras scientists, returning to the real world was frightening.

But, as usual, there came a time where he became far too curious to sit back and do nothing.

Hurtling back into the world was an experience in and of itself. The restrictions of a body weighed him down and left him winded, the sudden transformation of his senses from absorbing a world to only seeing part of one was jarring. His eyes remained firmly closed, but harry could hear monitors beeping and feel the starchiness of hospital sheets. The first thought that occurred to him was that hydra had no use for his unconscious body anymore and moved him. The fear that accompanied that thought was paralyzing, and before he could make the decision to once again retreat into his mind, a voice spoke to him.

"Little brother? Are you awake?"

It was if his mind's raging storms cleared in an instant. For him to have had such an instinctual reaction to the voice, they must have spoken to him constantly, soothing him even if his conscience wasn't there to notice it.

Harry's eyelids felt as if they were held down by a great force, but he fought that in order to see this man that had inspired such a reaction.

Pietro gasped as he, for the first time, saw beautifully green eyes peering at him from under heavy eyelashes. The boy that he had fought so hard for was finally awake, finally safe.

"Hello, little brother. I am glad you are conscious."


End file.
